Editing Frederick Law Olmsted (section)

==Career==
===Journalism===
Olmsted had a significant career in journalism. In 1850 he traveled to England to visit public gardens, where he was greatly impressed by [[Joseph Paxton]]'s [[Birkenhead Park]]. He subsequently wrote and published ''Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England'' in 1852.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Homsy|first=Bryn|date=2001|title=Frederick Law Olmsted|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/44791222|journal=Historic Gardens Review|issue=9|pages=2–7|jstor=44791222|issn=1461-0191}}</ref> This supported his getting additional work. His visit to Birkenhead Park inspired his later contribution to the design of [[Central Park]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite book|last=Olmsted|first=Frederick Law|author-link=Frederick Law Olmsted|title=Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England|url=https://archive.org/details/walkstalksofamer00olmsuoft|publisher=George E. Putnam|year=1852|oclc=3900449|page=83}}</ref>

Interested in the slave economy, he was commissioned by the ''New York Daily Times'' (now ''[[The New York Times]]'') to embark on an extensive research journey through the [[American South]] and [[Texas]] from 1852 to 1857. His dispatches to the ''Times'' were collected into three volumes (''A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States'' (1856), ''A Journey Through Texas'' (1857), ''A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853–4'' (1860).

These are considered vivid first-person accounts of the antebellum South. A one-volume abridgment, ''Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom'' (1861), was published in England during the first six months of the [[American Civil War]], at the suggestion of Olmsted's English publisher.<ref>Cf. Wilson, p. 220. "At the beginning of the Civil War, it was suggested by Olmsted's English publisher that a one-volume abridgment of all three of these books would be of interest to the British public, and Olmsted, then busy with Central Park, arranged to have this condensation made by an anti-slavery writer from North Carolina. Olmsted himself contributed to a new introduction on ''The Present Crisis''."</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Stampp, Kenneth M.|author-link=Kenneth M. Stampp|doi=10.1086/ahr/59.1.141 |title=review of ''The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States. Based upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author'' by Frederick Law Olmsted; edited, with an introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger|journal=The American Historical Review |date=1953 }}  [https://archive.org/details/8199d8e2-6d13-4b7b-8799-b595e8c9e32a/page/n5/mode/2up vol. 1 of 1861 edition] [https://archive.org/details/cottonkingdomtra00olms/page/n5/mode/2up vol. 2 of 1861 edition]</ref><ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1215/00382876-54-1-164 |title=review of ''The Cotton Kingdom'' by Frederick Law Olmsted; edited, with an introduction, by Arthur M. Schlesinger|date=1955 |last1=Woody |first1=Robert Hilliard|journal=South Atlantic Quarterly |volume=54 |pages=164–165 |s2cid=257878647 }}</ref>

To this, he wrote a new introduction (on "The Present Crisis"). He stated his views on the effect of slavery on the economy and social conditions of the southern states:

{{blockquote|My own observation of the real condition of the people of our Slave States, gave me ... an impression that the cotton monopoly in some way did them more harm than good; and although the written narration of what I saw was not intended to set this forth, upon reviewing it for the present publication, I find the impression has become a conviction.}}

He argued that slavery had made the slave states inefficient (a set amount of work took 4 times as long in Virginia as in the North) and backward both economically and socially. He said that the profits of slavery were enjoyed by no more than 8,000 owners of large plantations; a somewhat larger group had about the standard of living of a New York City policeman, but the proportion of the free white men who were as well-off as a Northern working man was small. Slavery meant that 'the proportion of men improving their condition was much less than in any Northern community; and that the natural resources of the land were strangely unused, or were used with poor economy.'

He thought that the lack of a Southern white middle class and the general poverty of lower-class whites prevented the development of many civil amenities that were taken for granted in the North.

{{blockquote|The citizens of the cotton States, as a whole, are poor. They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little – very little – of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and it is moral ... They were neither generous nor hospitable and their talk was not that of evenly courageous men.<ref>Olmsted, Frederick Law, [https://archive.org/details/cottonkingdomat07olmsgoog <!-- quote=the cotton kingdom. --> ''The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States. Based Upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations''], Mason Brothers, 1862.</ref>}}

Between his travels in Europe and the South, Olmsted served as an editor for ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]'' for two years<ref name="magazines"/> and as an agent with Dix, Edwards and Co., before the company's insolvency during the [[Panic of 1857]]. Olmsted provided financial support for, and occasionally wrote for, the magazine ''[[The Nation (U.S. periodical)|The Nation]]'', which was founded in 1865.<ref name="magazines">{{cite journal |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/nov/05/frederick-law-olmsted-americas-green-giant/ |title=America's Green Giant |last=Filler |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Filler |date=November 5, 2015 |volume=62 |number=17 |journal=[[New York Review of Books]] |access-date=November 8, 2015}}</ref> "Olmsted spent much of his free time working without pay as an editorial assistant to [the magazine's first editor, Edwin L.] [[Edwin Lawrence Godkin|Godkin]]. It was a labor of love."<ref>Hall, Lee, ''Olmsted's America'', p. 147.</ref>

===New York City's Central Park===
[[File:Frederick law olmstead 1857.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1|Olmsted in 1857]]
[[File:Central park manhattan 2 New York photo D Ramey Logan.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Olmsted and Vaux in 1863 adopted "landscape architect" as a professional title and used it to describe their work for the planning of urban [[park system]]s.]]
[[File:Team that Created NY Central Park.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Willowdell Arch with the team that created [[Central Park]], including (from right): Olmsted, [[Jacob Wrey Mould]], [[Ignaz Anton Pilat]], [[Calvert Vaux]], [[George E. Waring Jr.|George Waring]], and [[Andrew Haswell Green]] in 1862]]

[[Andrew Jackson Downing]], the landscape architect from [[Newburgh, New York]], was one of the first to propose developing New York City's [[Central Park]] in his role as publisher of ''[[The Horticulturist (magazine)|The Horticulturist]]'' magazine. A friend and mentor to Olmsted, Downing introduced him to the English-born architect [[Calvert Vaux]], whom Downing had brought to the U.S. as his architectural collaborator. After Downing died in July 1852 in a widely publicized fire on the [[Hudson River]] steamboat [[Henry Clay (steamboat)|Henry Clay]], Olmsted and Vaux entered the Central Park design competition together, against [[Egbert Ludovicus Viele]] among others. Vaux had invited the less experienced Olmsted to participate in the design competition with him, having been impressed with Olmsted's theories and political contacts. Prior to this, in contrast with the more experienced Vaux, Olmsted had never designed or executed a landscape design.

Their [[Greensward Plan]] was announced in 1858 as the winning design. On his return from the South, Olmsted began executing their plan almost immediately. Olmsted and Vaux continued their informal partnership to design [[Prospect Park (Brooklyn)|Prospect Park in Brooklyn]] from 1865 to 1873.<ref name="Lancaster">{{cite book |last=Lancaster |first=Clay |year=1972 |title=Handbook of Prospect Park |publisher=Long Island University Press |pages=51–66 |isbn=0-913252-06-9 |url=http://www.greenswardparks.org/books/handbook.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090827114424/http://www.greenswardparks.org/books/handbook.html |archive-date=August 27, 2009 }}</ref> That was followed by other projects. Vaux remained in the shadow of Olmsted's grand public personality and social connections.

The design of Central Park embodies Olmsted's social consciousness and commitment to egalitarian ideals. Influenced by Downing and his observations regarding social class in England, China, and the American South, Olmsted believed that the common green space must always be equally accessible to all citizens, and was to be defended against private encroachment. This principle is now fundamental to the idea of a "public park", but was not assumed as necessary then. Olmsted's tenure as Central Park commissioner was a long struggle to preserve that idea.<ref>{{harvnb|Kalfus|1991|pages=308ff}}</ref>

===U.S. Sanitary Commission===
In 1861, Olmsted took leave as director of Central Park to work in Washington, D.C., as Executive Secretary of the [[U.S. Sanitary Commission]], a precursor to the [[Red Cross]]. He tended to the wounded during the [[American Civil War]]. In 1862, during Union General [[George B. McClellan]]'s [[Peninsula Campaign]], he headed the medical effort for the sick and wounded at [[White House (plantation)|White House]] plantation in [[New Kent County, Virginia|New Kent County]], which had a boat landing on the [[Pamunkey River]].

He was one of the six founding members of the [[Union League Club of New York]].

He helped to recruit and outfit three African-American regiments of the [[United States Colored Troops]] in New York City.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}} He contributed to organizing a [[Sanitary Fair]], which raised one million dollars for the [[United States Sanitary Commission]].

He worked for the Sanitary Commission to the point of exhaustion: "Part of the problem was his need to maintain control over all aspects of the commission's work. He refused to delegate and he had an appetite for authority and power."<ref name="masur"/> By January 1863 a friend wrote: "Olmsted is in an unhappy, sick, sore mental state ... He works like a dog all day and sits up nearly all night ... works with steady, feverish intensity till four in the morning, sleeps on a sofa in his clothes, and breakfasts on strong coffee and pickles!!!"<ref name="masur"/> His overwork and lack of sleep led to his being in a perpetual state of irritability, which wore on the people with whom he worked: "Exhausted, ill and having lost the support of the men who put him in charge, Olmsted resigned on Sept. 1, 1863." Yet within a month he was on his way to California.<ref name="masur">{{cite web |url=https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/olmsteds-southern-landscapes/ |title=Olmsted's Southern Landscapes |last=Masur |first=Louis P. |date=July 9, 2011 |website=New York Times |access-date=September 20, 2018}}</ref>

===Gold mining project in California===
In 1863, Olmsted went west to become the manager of the newly established [[Rancho Las Mariposas|Rancho Las Mariposas–Mariposa]] gold mining estate in the [[Sierra Nevada (U.S.)|Sierra Nevada]] mountains in [[California]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Olmsted/intro.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991011200344/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Olmsted/intro.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 11, 1999 |title=Olmsted Introduction }}</ref> The estate had been sold by [[John C. Fremont]] to New York banker, [[Morris Ketchum]], in January of that same year. The mine was unsuccessful. "By 1865, the Mariposa Company was bankrupt, Olmsted returned to New York, and the land and mines were sold at a sheriff's sale."<ref>{{cite book |last=Chamberlain |first=Newell D. |date=1936 |title=The Call of Gold: True Tales on the Gold Road to Yosemite |publisher=Gazette Press |location=Mariposa, California}}</ref>

In 1865, he was appointed to the first board of commissioners for managing the newly established [[Yosemite National Park|Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove]] land grants.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/olmsted/ |title=Yosemite History: Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date= |website=Yosemite National Park |publisher= |accessdate=April 26, 2022 }}</ref>

===U.S. park designer===
{{For|a more complete list of parks|List of Olmsted works}}

In 1865, he and Vaux formed Olmsted, Vaux & Co. When Olmsted returned to New York, he and Vaux designed [[Prospect Park (Brooklyn)|Prospect Park]]; the [[Planned community|planned]] Chicago suburb of [[Riverside, Illinois]]; the park system for [[Buffalo, New York]]; [[Milwaukee]]'s grand necklace of parks; and the [[Niagara Reservation]] at [[Niagara Falls]] and [[Belle Isle Park (Michigan)|Belle Isle]] in Detroit.

Olmsted conceived of entire systems of parks and interconnecting parkways to connect certain cities to green spaces. Some of the best examples of the scale on which he worked are the park system designed for Buffalo, one of the largest projects; the system he designed for Milwaukee, and the park system designed for [[Louisville, Kentucky]], which was one of only four completed Olmsted-designed park systems in the world.{{Citation needed|date=August 2013}}

{{For| a list of Olmsted-designed parks in Buffalo, New York | Buffalo, New York parks system}}
[[File:Frederick Law Olmsted.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''Frederick Law Olmsted'', oil painting by [[John Singer Sargent]], 1895, [[Biltmore Estate]], [[Asheville, North Carolina]] ]]
Olmsted was a frequent collaborator with architect [[Henry Hobson Richardson]], for whom he devised the landscaping schemes for half a dozen projects, including Richardson's commission for the [[Buffalo State Asylum]].<ref>Carla Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp. 127–139.</ref> In 1871, Olmsted and Vaux designed the grounds for the [[Hudson River State Hospital|Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane]] in [[Poughkeepsie]].<ref name="Farrell">{{cite web|url=https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/life/2019/08/14/photo-book-unveils-life-history-hudson-river-state-hospital/1997429001/|title=Through photographs, history of 'Hudson River State Hospital' unveiled|last=Farrell|first=Barbara Gallo|work=www.poughkeepsiejournal.com|date=August 14, 2019|access-date=August 14, 2019}}</ref>

In 1883, Olmsted established what is considered to be the first full-time landscape architecture firm in [[Brookline, Massachusetts]]. He called the home and office compound ''Fairsted''. It is now the restored [[Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site]]. From there Olmsted designed Boston's [[Emerald Necklace]], the campuses of [[Wellesley College]], [[Smith College]], [[Stanford University]] and the [[University of Chicago]], as well as the 1893 [[World's Fair]] in Chicago, among many other projects.

Olmsted was one of the planners of the [[National Zoological Park (United States)|National Zoo]] in Washington, D.C., which was founded in 1889.<ref>[https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/smithsonian-national-zoological-park Smithsonian National Zoological Park]</ref>

===Conservationist===
Olmsted was an important early leader of the [[conservation movement]] in the United States. An expert on California, he was likely one of the gentlemen "of fortune, of taste and of refinement" who proposed, through Senator John Conness, that Congress designate [[Yosemite Valley]] and Mariposa Big Tree Grove as public reserves.<ref>Laura Wood Roper. "FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted".</ref> This was the first land set aside by Congress for public use. Olmsted served a one-year appointment on the Board of Commissioner of the state reserve, and his 1865 report to Congress on the board's recommendations laid an ethical framework for the government to reserve public lands, to protect their "value to posterity". He described the "sublime" and "stately" landscape, emphasizing that the value of the landscape was not in any one individual waterfall, cliff, or tree, but in the "miles of scenery where cliffs of awful height and rocks of vast magnitude and of varied and exquisite coloring, are banked and fringed and draped and shadowed by the tender foliage of noble and lovely trees and bushes, reflected from the most placid pools, and associated with the most tranquil meadows, the most playful streams, and every variety of soft and peaceful pastoral beauty".<ref>Frederick Law Olmsted, "The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove".</ref>

In the 1880s, he was active in efforts to conserve the natural wonders of [[Niagara Falls]], threatened with industrialization by the building of electrical power plants. At the same time, he campaigned to preserve the [[Adirondack mountains|Adirondack region]] in upstate New York. He was one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1898.<ref>Albert Fein, ''Frederick Law Olmsted and the American Environmental Tradition'' (1972).</ref>

Olmsted was also known to oppose park projects on conservationist grounds. In 1891, Olmsted refused to develop a plan for [[Presque Isle Park]] in [[Marquette, Michigan]], saying that it "should not be marred by the intrusion of artificial objects".<ref>{{cite news |title=Jewels of Olmsted's Unspoiled Midwest |first=Justin |last=Martin |date=September 2, 2011 |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/travel/jewels-of-olmsteds-unspoiled-midwest.html}}</ref>